SoftwireEngineer;140476 Wrote: > If the Big Ben sounds the same irrespective of player, cables etc. then > it really isolates the jitter out. I will spring for one whenever I > find a good price, Thanks for the reply.
Umm, be careful what conclusions you derive from those reports. I've used Big Bens with several sets of equipment over some time, and can report that, indeed, the BB does an impressive job of isolating output from input jitter -- but whether or not that turns out to be an actual improvement depends on the quality of the source. What comes out of the Big Ben generally sounds like the Big Ben. For some sources (to my ears, in one setup feeding an Arcam AVR, a stock SB2 via either digital out with any power supply or an SB3 with the original switcher) that's an improvement. Once I started playing with an SB3 sipping from a good-quality linear 5V supply, two things happened: I realized that the SB3's digital out was good enough that I could clearly hear an improvement over the same SB3 fed by the switcher, and I realized that I liked the naked linear-fed SB3's coax outputs better than the output of the Big Ben. Once you get to, say, a Bolder-modified SB3, the Big Ben is clearly outclassed. You can even things up some by doing the keen one-cap mod Dan posted some months (years?) ago on Another List -- basically you just replace one of the BB's power supply filter electrolytics with an appropriate Blackgate, and that, believe it or not, cleans up the power the thing is being fed enough to be clearly audible, and to remove some of the scratchiness in its signature. But really, though I chose not to 'bay my BBs because they're still useful stabilizing particularly crappy consumer-equipment or computer S/PDIF streams and getting them comfortably into the ballpark of audiophilic, I wouldn't subject a really clean digital stream to a Big Ben, because the BB's democratizing effect would be operating in the wrong direction. For example -- right out of the box, the Transporter is a remarkably good digital transport. I'm very impressed. I wouldn't run it through a Big Ben any more than I'd pee in a bowl of Daniel Boulud's soup. -- jbm0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jbm0's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3949 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27359 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
